


pseudonym

by hfszn



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Canon Temporary Character Death, Character Study, Fake Character Death, Gen, Lowercase, Not Beta Read, POV Second Person, but canon yknow, but its emilys pov yknow, im really tired please let me know if i should tag anything else, this is all based on canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-27
Updated: 2020-09-27
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:21:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26675827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hfszn/pseuds/hfszn
Summary: you are emily prentiss and, as you look at yourself in the mirror, all cold eyes and well-practiced neutral smile, you realize that you do not know who that is. you've lost so many pieces of yourself through the years it's too hard to piece the real you together anymore.
Relationships: Emily Prentiss & The BAU Team, Ian Doyle & Emily Prentiss
Comments: 1
Kudos: 10





	pseudonym

**Author's Note:**

> not my? best work? im really sorry im in a pretty bad headspace rn (which allowed me to write this fic, not so much write this note) no more warnings than canon for emily, i dunno, remind me to edit this

you are sixteen years old and you think you must have the worst mother in the world.

you think it’s funny, mostly, how your mother can be so observant of everything except her own daughter. you pierce your ears with the sewing needles she bought you when you were twelve and she doesn’t even bat an eye when the housekeeper tells her about the blood on the pillowcase. you dye your hair, cut your clothes until distressed isn’t even close to describing it, hang out with what you’re sure she would call ‘the wrong crowd’ and you tell yourself that this is not a cry for attention. you have enough attention, from the kids at school and the clubs you’re not old enough yet to get into, and you don’t need  _ hers _ . 

it’s just that, sometimes, when you sneak back into the house after a night full of drinks and drugs and other things you definitely shouldn’t be doing on the day of the lord, you kind of wish she would at least say  _ something _ . 

you tell yourself that it’s not because she doesn’t care about you, because she is your mother and she must care about you, but rather that she’s just busy. she still takes you to church every sunday (so she can keep up appearances) and she still fills your bank account with more money than any sixteen-year-old should need every week (most likely an automated system she signed off on and hasn’t adjusted). she loves you (in public) and you say you love her too. it’s politics, she tells you, once, as if that is all the explanation you need to sit and force a smile for yet another meeting with someone you don’t even know. 

you are only sixteen years old, with more power and time than any sixteen-year-old needs, and you think you just might hate politics a little more than you hate yourself. 

\--

lauren reynolds is twenty years old and she is dead--if she could have ever been considered alive in the first place--and you, not for the first time, are not. 

ian doyle was powerful, more powerful than you or anyone else would have guessed, but he was still just a man, a man who was in love with you, with lauren reynolds, and even more so in love with his son. he was a man who loves and he is, now, a man who grieves because of it. 

grief makes man fragile and a fragile man is weak. 

you tell him that declan is dead, show him the pictures you staged and find no guilt in yourself for the way he breaks over it. you do not care for him, even if he cares for the fabricated person you have become, and as you watch him get pulled away to be imprisoned you think that you’ve done well. this is the best outcome, you know that. ian doyle is gone, his son and caretaker shipped away to a place where only you know, and you, as far as he is concerned, are dead. 

interpol has connections, resources you know better than to ask about, and, as far as all of europe is concerned, lauren reynolds died in a car crash. she is burning onto asphalt while you are burning documents in a house you’ve called home for far longer than you’ve wanted to.

with the mission over, you go back stateside. you cut your hair. you call your mom. you ask her how she’s been. you do not tell her what you’ve done.

it’s routine, at this point, once you’re settled into the newest six-month lease. switch out the contacts, wash your hair,  ~~try not to think of how everyone who’s known you for the past year, everyone you’ve known and befriended,~~ thinks you are dead as the dye swirls into the drain , stock the pantry, and attempt to redefine yourself at the kitchen table. 

you decide you like strawberries, but only when they’re sweet. your favorite color is orange but you tell everyone it’s black anyways. you like the sunrise because you are a morning person now and you watch it from your balcony with a cup of coffee—you take your coffee with two sugars and a splash of milk—every morning you get the chance. you prefer cats to dogs because they’re quiet, like you, and independent. you have few you can trust, but this is the one thing you know to be constant.

you think it might just be a little sad how everything you know about yourself is what you tell yourself to be true. what must it be like to be a true person, you wonder. most days you feel like you are a ghost, shifting in and out of existence as the world sees fit to it. you are lauren and samantha and violet but you are not because they are dead and you are not but you don’t think you’re alive because you’ve never truly been living. you think you’ve fractured yourself into pieces just to stay safe but something must have gone wrong along the way because it’s hard to feel safe with all of these cracks and missing pieces. you wonder what it must be like to be whole. 

you are only twenty years old and you are not dead, yet, but in a way, you think you are because you are everyone you have ever been and yet no one at the same time. 

\--

you are forty years old and you, for the first time, are dead but you also are not.

it’s a harrowing experience, dying. it’s cold and dark and everything and nothing at once. you think this must be hell, for a moment, because you grew up with the church even if you choose not to believe in it now. they always told you you’d pay for your sins and this, all of this nothingness after the past years filled with the team you’ve always been too afraid to call a family, must be how. 

you think you’d deserve it. 

you didn’t mean to drag them into this mess. this mess wasn’t supposed to  _ be _ a mess in the first place. ian doyle was supposed to be gone, for good, nothing more than a nightmare, a redacted footnote on your work history. he wasn’t supposed to be here, to be so close, to know you were alive. 

you wake up and for a moment you wish you didn’t. for a moment, you see hotch and jj and wish you didn’t because at least if you were dead he would leave them alone. 

you tell them about you, about lauren reynolds, and you tell yourself that this is not a death bed confessional and they tell you that they know. they offer to keep this a secret, to kill emily prentiss and ship her off to god knows where until they catch doyle. you want to cry. you don’t. 

you nod. 

it’s a new name but it’s an old experience, once you know quite well at this point. choose a new appearance, pick out a new apartment,  ~~ don’t think about how they buried you and mourned you and are going to forget you because that’s what people do, they forget, and you know they will too, ~~ stock the pantry and reinvent yourself. you play scrabble with ‘cheetobreath’ and go to the local patisseries so you can at least pretend fresh bread makes you happy.

this is temporary, you remind yourself, as you settle in to a new routine you tell yourself you love because you have to. you throw yourself into your role like you’re a method actor and try to breathe around the crushing realization that not everything was okay. 

you are only forty years old but you don’t know if your friends are okay, if they’ll ever be okay, if you’ll ever get to come back home because ian doyle is not a man who gets caught twice. 

\--

you are forty-one years old when you get to come back home, properly, for the last time. 

there are some bumps and hurdles that you have to get over before you can properly say everything is okay but it’s more than enough just being able to see everyone’s face again. you feel bad, mostly, guilt a constant weight in your stomach because of what you did, what you agreed to do to ensure everyone’s safety, and it takes longer for some to forgive you but you’re willing to give it time.

time is something you have more of now. 

jj helps you most days, when you feel like you’re drowning under the guilt and their anger and grieving. she doesn’t look at you like you’re a ghost, like most of them do, and you know it’s because she’s always known that you were okay when the others didn’t but you don’t focus on that. instead, you focus on her support because it’s all you have, no matter who you are.

you are only forty-one years old and there’s still so much you have to do, so much you have to explain but, for the first time in a long time, you know you don’t have to do it alone.

**Author's Note:**

> hi thank you for reading my work, please let me know what you thought and also hmu on tumblr [@criminalszn](criminalszn.tumblr.com) gn


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